Tangential
by SqutternutBosh
Summary: Aboard the Dalek Crucible, Rose seemed none too shocked, or upset, when Jack died. What if, in all her parallel universe trotting, she had met dozens of near-Jack's and had to break the same sad story to them all, always waiting to see her Jack again?


A/N: So I'm clearing out my hard drive and I find this, which has been sitting around for ages. As I don't intend to be writing any fanfiction any time soon, I thought I'd post it rather than just delete it. Vague spoilers for DW series 4, none for COE.

_Here_

'It's so good to see you, Rosie!'

The mood is infectious, everyone laughing and smiling and hugging and reuniting, and if there was one person Rose Tyler wanted to see more than any other (excepting the Doctor, of course) it was Captain Jack Harkness. His familiar spicy scent, tangy with the afterburn of smoke and spaceship, engulfs her just as his strong arms do and he laughs as he squeezes her tighter.

Loosening his crushing grip, he leans back, as if to get a good look at her pink and yellow face.

'Now this is more like the reunion I imagined,' he beams, all teeth and contentment, 'just had to take care of business first!'

'Business always comes first,' she smiles.

'Very professional.'

This time it is she who pulls him into a suffocating embrace, her nose buried in the navy creases of his shirt. He chuckles good-naturedly- the warmth of the sound rumbles in his chest, so that she feels his joy as well as hears it- and plants a kiss on the top of her head.

'Aren't you going to ask me?' he asks, overly casual, as she finally releases him.

'Ask you what?' She can be flippant too.

'The whole 'ohmigod-you-came-back-to-life' thing? Ring any bells?'

'As long as you're alive, Jack, I really don't care.'

His face falls.

'Not even a-,' and rises once again, as if his features are being tugged along by a roller coaster. 'You know. You already know! How can you already know?'

'It's kinda hard to explain…'

'Lemme guess, Rose Tyler,' he huffs out a breath as if he knows the answer, and knows that it's not going to be easy. 'Parallel universes?'

'Could it be anything else?'

'With you, probably not. So, you met another me, did ya? One can only imagine the possibilities…' he waggles his eyebrows in a manner so heart-achingly familiar that her response is automatic despite the burnt out tyre-tracks of time between them.

'No, Jack, only you could imagine those possibilities.'

He winks. 'Nah, you're just not creative enough. Another me…' There's a quality in his voice that is almost dreamy and Rose suddenly gets the strangest, sharp-shooting feeling that even if Jack did meet himself, they'd never get along. Too similar, too different. 'I'm better of course.'

'That's exactly what he said.'

…*…

_There_

'The problem with parallel universes,' Rose found herself explaining to a man who had once been her co-teacher in the ways of space and time, 'is that they're just not all… well, they're not all _parallel_.'

'Right.'

'I mean, that whole parallel thing, from what Torchwood- _my _Torchwood- has been able to figure out, it's all just a theory.'

'That's all it was in the Time Agency,' Jack agreed, his face now much more sombre than it had been when she had first materialised upon the over-crowded Plass, full of broken Londoners who had been shipped from their homes to a make-shift khaki camp in a city with barely enough room for the occupants it already had. A camp built for the survivors of an alien attack, set up right on top of a secret alien fighting team. 'We were pretty sure that they existed, sure, but to travel to them? Thought that was impossible. All theoretical.'

'Exactly. And that's all it should be, we think. Only the walls are weakening and with this scavenged technology we _can _travel between them when it really should be impossible.'

'That… can only be a bad thing.'

'Why else would I be here?'

'Shame that,' he smiled. 'Under better circumstances…'

'Yeah.'

Jack straightened in his seat and Rose saw as he glanced through the glass at the two team members she had been briefly introduced to- a strong-spirited Welsh woman who had greeted Rose with a friendly smile when she thought her to be a victim of the Rift, and a younger Welshman Rose thinks she has seen around Torchwood Tower in Pete's Universe- with a sort of sadness in his eyes.

He was so different from her Jack. She was so different from his Rose.

'But we can fix it?'

'We'll need the Doctor.'

'I, uh- Rose, he's-,'

'Dead, I know.'

'Then you know there's nothing we can do.'

'There is.'

'Parallel universe?'

'Yes. I'm sorry, Jack, but… This universe has splintered. This should be the right one, my home, where I came from, it should be the right place to find the Doctor and stop the stars going out. Like I said, not all parallel universes are parallel. At the moment they're all kinda… leaning, pointing one way-,'

'Converging.'

'Yeah. Converging. On one point, on one woman.'

'Who?'

'Donna Noble.'

Jack frowned and Rose fought the temptation to smile. Nobody ever expected the universe to be saved by such an ordinary woman.

'Never heard of her,' he said.

'No, of course you haven't. She's so fantastically ordinary, a temp from Chiswick, all bolshy attitude and red hair-,'

'Always liked a red head.'

She ignored the flicker of her old, unhaunted Jack, though it was a relief to know he was still under there. They were leaders now, both bore the responsibility of followers.

'- and she's just a normal human being. No dreams of space as a kid, no asking the big questions, just… Donna. And she's what we need. What the Doctor needs.'

'So what you're saying is… this universe, this splinter I- _we_- live in- it shouldn't exist?'

'It was never supposed to.'

'And everything we…' he sighed and pressed the ends of his fingers together, the worn steeple at the top of his praying arms. 'If we sort the problem, we'll just blink out of existence?'

Rose worried at her bottom lip, Jacks' eyes intensely on her, burning away, enabling him to see everything.

'Splinters are splinters, Jack. They're broken off from something and then- and then they're lost,' she eventually settles on saying. It's impossible to look at him as she adds, 'You won't even notice.'

'That's reassuring.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Don't.'

'I am though, Jack. Sorry. _Really_.'

'You sound just like him.'

'I can't decide whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.'

'Me neither.'

'It's definitely a difficult thing.'

'O-ho, I know where you're coming from.'

Neither of them speaks for a long moment, and Rose watches as Jack tilts his chair once again to watch his team at work. Not that either Gwen or Ianto are getting much done as they are both failing miserably at trying not to look interested in what is going on in the office. It would perhaps be more subtle if Gwen didn't keep twitching her head in their general direction every ten seconds, and if Ianto wasn't clearly pre-occupied with looking between the office and looking at Gwen looking at the office.

When this problem was sorted, they would be gone, as if they had never been there and only some parallel-thems would be able to continue, like pressing retry on a video game and being replaced at the beginning to start on a new path. Hopefully the right one.

Jack sighed and rubbed his hands wearily over his face.

'I didn't think this world was right,' he says after a moment, voice muffled as his lips are hidden behind his hands, as if he doesn't want these doubts to escape, to be made real and to fight back. 'I always say the twenty-first century is when everything changes, but not like this.'

'No,' she agrees. 'I mean, c'mon, a world with no Doctor?'

'There isn't one where you're from.'

'And he's not _meant_ to be there. He's meant to be in this one.'

Silence settles on them once again, as much as there is ever silence in the Hub, Rose suspects, what with all the whirrings and tickings and beepings of mechanical life.

'It's not me I'm worried about, hell, could be kind of a relief, it's…' he's looking past her again, _at_ the window but not through it as if the glass holds his reality in a bubble that could burst if he even looked at it differently. 'If things are put right, everybody lives?'

'In a parallel universe. Everybody lives. Somewhere.'

'One universe for all the universes?' he blinked and tore his eyes away from the glass. He had caught Ianto's eye, and he hadn't wanted to, not this time. 'It's always one or the other in this job.'

'It's not really even a choice,' she points out, so sickly sorry that she had to bring this to him and his team when they are already grieving, already struggling with the domino-falling crescendo of consequences that Donna's turning left had led to in this universe. Rose needs Jack's help though, to follow the plan she and her team in her universe have set out. She needs Jack and Torchwood and UNIT and most of all, Donna, otherwise none of this will ever be set right. Never be set back on the straight and parallel. It's all so… tangential.

'No. No, it's not,' he sighed once more and then stood abruptly, offering her a hand and a grin across the top of his desk, the low lighting casting oil-slick shadows across his face. 'We better get started.'

…*…

She had explained what they needed to do, given Jack and Gwen and Ianto the information she had, what little of it there was, and their instructions to follow. Gwen and Ianto were not given the whole story and Rose could see that this irritated Gwen, something about 'Jack-and-his-bloody-secrets' and she wondered just what Jack had to hide. It was then that Rose realised that as much as she _knew _Jack, she didn't know about him, or his history, or the ghosts that haunt his eyes.

It wasn't long before she found herself back in Jack's office, the simple yellow button that allowed her to hop across dimensions giving a bleep of a five minute warning.

'So that's it then?' Jack had asked.

'As far as I know. We just need to get Donna to the right place at the right time.'

'But that's not really our job.'

'No. You've got yours, I've got mine.'

God, she was tired.

She stared hard at Jack. He stared back for a moment, understanding that need to attempt to decipher another human being with your own eyes, to want to puzzle them out even though you could never do the same to yourself.

'What?' he queried eventually. Perhaps she's been staring so long as to make him uncomfortable.

She pursed her lips and cocked her head, Jack unconsciously mirroring her slight tilt. The world was suddenly set on a slant.

'It's hard. You should be my Jack, only… you're not.'

'Only, I am.' He winks.

'You are.' She laughs, though it sounds like she's glugging back tears. 'Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey.'

'What?'

'It just sounds like something he would say.'

'Yeah… Y'know, you never asked me why I was here.'

'Go on then, Jack,' she humoured him, 'what are you doing in Cardiff of all places?'

'Funny story really. Y'see, I can't die.'

It's supposed to be impactful, she's supposed to react and stumble and question, only Rose is too tired. 'I know.'

The frown triggers instantly across Jack's forehead like a gun from a bullet. 'You know?'

'Parallel universes, Jack. I've had this conversation before.'

…*…

_Here_

Jack's first reaction seems to be to laugh. 'How many parallels did you travel to?'

Rose sucks in a breath, shakes her falling hair from her face. 'Too many.'

'And same story every time?'

'Well it took a while to get right.'

'And in the others-?'

'They always died. Everyone did.'

'I'm sorry, Rose.'

'Yeah… And I'm sorry, too, Jack. I know they were never your Ianto or Gwen but… I saw that look on your face too many times. You were never ready.'

'Never can be.'

And with that, the Doctor is calling over to them and Jack is sweeping Rose up into one final hug, which she knows is goodbye but hopes against hope isn't. How are you supposed to say goodbye to an immortal man?

'I don't blame you,' he whispers in her ear, warm breath tickling round the skin shell, 'Bad Wolf.'

And then he's gone, laughing and ready to get back to _his _Ianto and Gwen who will be waiting impatiently for his return.


End file.
